Cleaned by Capitalism

Here's a letter that I sent this Earth Day to the Christian Science Monitor:

22 April 2005

Editor, The Christian Science Monitor

Dear Editor:

Clay Bennett’s Earth Day cartoon shows scissors (labeled “White House”) recklessly slicing through environmental statutes. Without here questioning the merits of the statutes or the reality of the slicing, I plead for protection of a most endangered resource: perspective. Pause for a moment to appreciate just how clean and safe our everyday environments are compared to those of our ancestors.

- Refrigeration keeps our food free of bacterial pollution;
- indoor plumbing immediately whisks away our own waste;
- household detergents clean our homes of germs and grime;
- automobiles keep our streets clean of horse manure and the swarms of flies it attracts;
- antibiotics and other medicines protect our bodies from many diseases, such as tuberculosis, that were major killers just a century ago.

In fact, our everyday lives are more sanitary and healthier today than at any time in history.

More Comments:

Max Swing -
4/24/2005

It would be right, if you knew the exact definition of "clean" they use ;)

They define clean and environmentally-friendly mostly different than any sane person would do.
Everything constructed in an artificial (not original natural) way is named as a pollutant.
So, horse dung would be ok, but a diesel-car with filters would not.
It's the same with household detergents: Thy kill natural germs and grime, thus they are not natural.